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Initiates have to see that people don't do wrong things, and doing something
wrong always begins with thinking, so they send people away for instruction
when they begin to think the wrong way."
She rattled this off like a lesson learned. Rodvard said;
"But who decides whether the Initiates themselves are right?"
"Why, they have to be! They learn everything through the God of love, and one
of them couldn't be wrong without the others finding it out. That was how
they found out that the Prophet was falling under the power of the god of
Evil, when he tried to change everything and had to leave us."
Rodvard picked at the bedcover for a moment (deciding it was as well to change
the subject). "But tell me why can't your Myonessae be loved for
themselves? I am only two days here, and know so little about your customs."
"By the diaconals who choose them, you mean? Ah, no. All the Myonessae know
they are only second choice. The diaconals have already chosen the service of
the God of love first."
"Then the Myonessae are jealous of the church or of your God of love?"
"Oh, no. Women think more spiritually than men. You must go to a service
with me and then you'll understand." The corner of her mouth twitched
slightly; she reached over to touch his hand. "I must go," she said, and was
gone.
This was the beginning of a custom, by which she came to him each morning to
be his instructor in all that concerned Mancherei. Once or twice fat Dame
Gualdis wheezed up the stair and smiled through the door at the two, wishing
them good morning as she went past on some errand, real or pretended; she
seemed to find it decorous that the girl often sat on the edge of Rodvard's
bed. Their conversation never seemed to fail, and they took delight in minor
contacts, as when he showed Leece the fashion of sitting wrestle he had
learned as a lad, with each opponent gripping the other's right elbow and only
that arm engaged. Leece was so nearly as strong as himself as to make the
contest a true one (and she was as greedy as he of the almost-meeting of
bodies, as the Blue Star told him. She would go a long way with him, it said,
perhaps all the way if pressed, but felt a little fearful of her own desires,
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and would want him as a husband in permanence. When she left, he would think
of Damaris the maid as he dressed, and how she also had sat on his bed, and
the end of that meeting, sweet and terrifying, how she had killed his Blue
Star, and how he would surely have been trapped into some regular connection
with her, had not circumstance ordered his flight from Sedad Vix. At this it
seemed to him, walking the street to his daily toil, that there was nothing in
the world so precious as that jewel and the use to which it must be put, and
he must reach Dossola again, and by no means do the thing that would rob the
Blue Star of its virtue; and then he thought of the penalty Lalette had
promised, which lay at the back of his mind like a dark cloud of dread. But
as he took his place on his stool, the thought came that he had already earned
whatever penalty there was. It was not credible that the accident of having
the Star's power restored by the old woman in the hut would disannul what he
had to bear; nor was it likely that the restoration would hide his action from
one possessed of the witch-powers of the far-away girl to whom he was bound.
But why was he bound to Lalette? Now the sweetness of the touch of Leece and
the desire of her body ran through him like a liquid fire, and he felt as
though he were running across a bridge no wider than a knife-blade over a
yawning chasm, toward a goal hidden in mist, and all his inner organs were
wrung.)
"Bergelin!" said the protostylarion. "You will remember that this work is
given to you as a charity, which it will profit you not to abuse."
Chapter 20
Inevitable
I
Another girl was already before the mirror in the dress-room, running a comb
through fair hair; taller than Lalette. She looked over her shoulder at the
newcomer with an expression not unlike that of a satisfied cat and went on
with her task, humming a little tune; Lalette felt that she was being asked to
speak first. "Your pardon," she said, "but I have just come. Can you tell me
where the soap is kept?"
The tall girl surveyed her. "We use our own," she said, "but if you have not
brought any, you may take some of mine tonight. In the black-dressing-box,
there on the table that is, if you do not mind violet scent."
"Oh, thank you. I didn't mean . . . My name is Lalette" (again the
hesitation, a momentary question whether to say "Bergelin" here, but that was
all dead and gone, she would never see him again) "Asterhax."
"My name is Nanhilde. We don't use second names in the Myonessae unless we
have been married. Have you, ever?"
"I "
""Oh, you must get rid of old-fashioned prejudices in a place like this.
I used to think that being married was something I wanted so much; but it
isn't really. It only chains you to some man, and next thing you know, you're
sewing jackets and raising brats for him. You wait till you're chosen; he'll
want to marry you and give up being an Initiate. They always do, and if you
say yes, you're lost, not your own mistress any more, and he'll always blame
you."
Lalette had been washing her face. Now she lifted it from the towel in time
to catch the middle term of the series. "But are you are we of the
Myonessae prevented from having children, then?"
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